Diane Hart

Diane Lavinia Hart (20 July 1926 – 7 February 2002) was an English actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television, as well as a political campaigner and inventor. Born in 1926, she was educated at various convents and at Abbot's Hill School in King's Langley, where she studied as a Classics scholar. She matriculated at fourteen and enrolled at RADA in 1941. During the Second World War, she worked for the BBC first as a secretary and then as an audio engineer, a role in which she was involved in broadcasting Hitler's speeches back to German audiences over British airwaves.

Hart's professional stage career began in 1943 when she worked as a feed in a double act with comedian Pat Aza at the Finsbury Park Empire, which led to a six-month tour of the Moss Empires circuit. She subsequently entertained troops through ENSA. Her theatrical breakthrough came with a supporting role in Daughter Janie at the Apollo Theatre in 1944, which in turn led to her casting in William Douglas-Home's political comedy The Chiltern Hundreds. The play, centered on an Earl of Lister and a local by-election, opened at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1946, with Hart playing the housemaid Bessie opposite A. E. Matthews. The production transferred to the Booth Theatre in New York in 1949, marking her Broadway appearance that year under the title Yes, M'Lord.

Following her Broadway engagement, Hart was cast in Terence Rattigan's comedy Who Is Sylvia? at the Criterion Theatre in 1950, replacing Glynis Johns, who had been the original choice for the production. The play required Hart to portray three separate characters across its three acts — an office girl, an actress, and a model — and co-starred Robert Flemyng and Roland Culver, both veterans of Rattigan's earlier French Without Tears. The production ran for just under a year and earned Hart favorable critical notices. Also in 1950, she took over the lead role in Nancy Mitford's adaptation of André Roussin's French farce The Little Hut at the Lyric Theatre, replacing Joan Tetzel opposite Robert Morley, with Peter Brook directing. In 1953, she played Mollie Ralston in one of the earliest runs of The Mousetrap at the Ambassadors Theatre for six months, after which she stepped away from the stage for eleven years to concentrate on television and film.

Hart returned to the West End in 1963, translating the Sardou play Divorce A La Carte and appearing in its production at the Phoenix Theatre alongside John Justin, Barry Shawzin, and Katy Greenwood. The following year, she appeared at the same venue in Every Other Evening alongside Margaret Lockwood, with whom she had first worked on the film The Wicked Lady. A long-running engagement followed with Joyce Rayburn's comedy The Man Most Likely To... at the Vaudeville Theatre in 1968, in which she appeared opposite Leslie Phillips. She later joined the cast of Ray Cooney and John Chapman's farce Move Over, Mrs Markham in 1972, replacing Moira Lister alongside Terence Alexander. Hart also worked at the Royal Court Theatre, appearing in Howard Barker's Cheek at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in 1970 and in Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O'Neill's Morality, directed by William Gaskill, at the same venue in 1971. Regional theatre credits in later years included the title role in Somerset Maugham's Mrs Dot at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in 1974, The Bank Manager in East Grinstead in 1974, Miss Adams Will Be Waiting at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford in 1975, and The Pleasure Principle at the New End in Hampstead in 1989.

Her film career began in the 1940s with a small role as a bridesmaid in the Margaret Lockwood costume drama The Wicked Lady in 1945. She subsequently held a contract with 20th Century-Fox and worked with director Jean Negulesco on Britannia Mews in 1949, a film scripted by Ring Lardner Jr. She appeared opposite David Niven in the musical Happy Go Lovely in 1951, a production in which her then-husband Kenneth MacLeod also had a small part. In 1971 she appeared in Games That Lovers Play alongside Joanna Lumley, Richard Wattis, Jeremy Lloyd, Penny Brahms, and Nan Munro. A clip from that film was later incorporated without authorization into a pornographic film called Electric Blue, 002, and in 1985 Hart, acting as her own legal counsel, was awarded £15,000 in libel damages as a result. Hart made numerous television appearances beginning at Alexandra Palace during the war and performed in radio productions for Val Gielgud. She played Ted Ray's wife in series six of the comedy series Ray's a Laugh.

Beyond acting, Hart was an inventor whose "Beatnix" corselet achieved substantial sales at Marks and Spencer during the 1960s, with customers including Mrs Alexei Kosygin, wife of the Soviet premier. She also proposed to the Ministry of Defence that harrows be attached to helicopters to clear landmines during the Falklands campaign. In politics, she attempted to establish a Women's Party in the United Kingdom, placing an anonymous advertisement in The Times soliciting women willing to stand for Parliament, and hired Caxton Hall in London for a rally, though only approximately forty women attended. She stood as an Independent candidate for Lewisham South in the 1970 general election, losing her deposit. Her political activities drew a critical footnote from Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch. In 1977, Hart brought legal action against the actors' union Equity to prevent a membership referendum on rule changes. In 1981, again representing herself, she successfully sued the Aga Khan Foundation United Kingdom in a five-day High Court case and was awarded £750 in damages for noise and nuisance caused by construction of the Ismaili Centre near her home close to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Hart was married to television broadcaster Kenneth MacLeod from 1956 until their separation in 1968. MacLeod was among the first presenters seen in the early days of Rediffusion and later served as the evening news anchorman at Westward Television. The couple had two daughters. In her final years, Hart was a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, where she regularly completed the cryptic crosswords in both The Times and The Daily Telegraph. She died on 7 February 2002 at the age of seventy-five.